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Enhanced Inscript as default Indic IM

Summary

The recommended default input method for Indic languages will be changed from Inscript to Enhanced Inscript keymaps.

Owner

Current status

  • Targeted release: Fedora 35
  • Last updated: 2021-07-22
  • FESCo issue: #2651
  • Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
  • Release notes tracker: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

We have enhanced Inscript keyboard layouts available in Fedora. But they were implemented some time back as draft implementation. We now want to update them to follow the final released standard keymappings.

It is available as IS 16350:2016 standard. Below is a table that shows current existing default input method keymap and proposed new input method keymap.

Language Locale code Existing default Input method New default Input method
Assamese as_IN as-phonetic.mim as-inscript2.mim
Bengali bn_IN bn-inscript.mim bn-inscript2.mim
Bodo brx_IN brx-inscript2-deva.mim brx-inscript2-deva.mim
Dogri doi_IN doi-inscript2-deva.mim doi-inscript2-deva.mim
Gujarati gu_IN gu-inscript.mim gu-inscript2.mim
Hindi hi_IN hi-inscript.mim hi-inscript2.mim
Kannada kn_IN kn-kgp.mim kn-inscript2.mim
Kashmiri ks_IN@devanagari ks-inscript.mim ks-inscript2-deva.mim
Konkani kok_IN kok-inscript2-deva.mim kok-inscript2-deva.mim
Maithili mai_IN mai-inscript.mim mai-inscript2.mim
Malayalam ml_IN ml-inscript.mim ml-inscript2.mim
Manipuri mni_IN mni-inscript2-beng.mim mni-inscript2-beng.mim
Marathi mr_IN mr-inscript.mim mr-inscript2.mim
Nepali ne_NP ne-rom.mim ne-inscript2-deva.mim
Odia or_IN or-inscript.mim or-inscript2.mim
Punjabi pa_IN pa-inscript.mim pa-inscript2-guru.mim
Sanskrit sa_IN sa-harvard-kyoto.mim sa-inscript2.mim
Santhali sat_IN sat-inscript2-deva.mim sat-inscript2-deva.mim
Sindhi sd_IN@devanagri sd-inscript.mim sd-inscript2-deva.mim
Tamil ta_IN ta-typewriter.mim ta-inscript2.mim
Telugu te_IN te-inscript.mim te-inscript2.mim


The current default in Gnome is here: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-desktop/-/blob/master/libgnome-desktop/default-input-sources.h

This change has already been done to ibus-m17n to show the inscript2 methods with higher priority than the inscript methods in ibus-setup: Bug 1982546 - Make inscript2 engines rank higher than inscript engines

Feedback

Benefit to Fedora

Users who want to use Enhanced Inscript keymaps will get to use them which will now use final released implementation of IS 16350:2016 standard.

Scope

  • Proposal owners:

Update the final released Enhanced Inscript Keyboard Layouts standard. This requires to update m17n-db package which uses https://pagure.io/inscript2 as upstream for these Enhanced Inscript keymaps. We will also need to update default keymaps for Indic languages from Inscript to Enhanced Inscript. This will be done in ibus-m17n package.

  • Other developers:
  • Release engineering: N/A (not needed for this Change)
  • Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)
  • Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

Upgrade/compatibility impact

Users will be moved from Inscript keymaps to Enhanced Inscript keymaps. Both are compatible to each other except some keymappings changed for Normal characters as well as Shifted Characters and 3rd layer (using AltGr) is added to type extra characters.


How To Test

We already have Enhanced Inscript keymaps in Fedora but their implementation is following draft released standard by Government. With this Change users can test final released standard keymaps.

They can still use the same testcase https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:Inscript2_Keymaps


User Experience

  • Users will type characters as per final released Enhanced Inscript standard keymaps.

Dependencies

m17n-db and ibus-m17n packages will be updated


Contingency Plan

Revert to older Inscript keymaps.

Documentation

We will add some information about this in Release notes.

Release Notes